M. Pierre Quillard, man of letters, who was present as a disinterested spectator at the Esterhazy trial, succeeded M. Ranc upon the witness-stand.
“As M. Zola is accused,” said he, “of having slandered the members of the council of war, reproaching them with having acquitted in obedience to orders, I believe that the impressions of a disinterested spectator may be useful in enlightening the religion of the jurors. We first listened to the indictment drawn up by M. Ravary. I suppose that the jurors are familiar with this document. It is indeed a remarkable document, very remarkable for its touching admiration of the eloquence of General Billot, and especially for the quite unusual kindliness exhibited toward the accused. And this kindliness seemed especially remarkable to those of us who were already familiar with the indictment of M. d’Ormescheville, seeing as we did that the same matters which were made a ground of complaint against that officer were cited in glorification of Major Esterhazy,—for instance, the fact of being a polyglot, and the fact of interesting himself in questions outside of his service. This indictment was, in reality, an argument against one of the witnesses, Lieutenant-Colonel Picquart. I felt at once that the disposition of the military court was favorable to M. Esterhazy. This impression was confirmed by the way in which the examination was conducted, and by the attitude of the court toward the witnesses. I do not wish to flatter the civil magistracy, but I believe that, as a rule, the civil magistrates study for themselves and in detail the documents relating to the matters submitted to them. Not so at all with the council of war, at least apparently. Every time that a specific document was referred to, the president of the council and the clerk had to appeal to M. Tézenas, M. Esterhazy’s lawyer. We are willing to believe that some of the documents cited were not of great importance, but here is an incident which seems to me notable and characteristic. M. Mathieu Dreyfus had declared in his testimony that in June, 1894, M. Esterhazy had written a letter in which he declared himself to be in a situation so frightful that, to extricate himself and his relatives, he perhaps would be obliged to commit a crime. It seems to me that this was a document of high importance in the case, but the president of the council had forgotten it, and M. Tézenas had to be called on to furnish the quotation. The document was handed to General de Luxer, who, after looking at it for some time, said: ‘There are four pages, it is very long;’ and then M. Mathieu Dreyfus went up to the bench and pointed out the specified phrase to the president. I was also very much struck at the kindly way in which M. Esterhazy’s examination was conducted. Whenever he suffered from lapse of memory, he had only to say: ‘That is not important,’ in order to cause his questioner to desist from pressing him. When M. Scheurer-Kestner said in his testimony: ‘Being a man, I may be mistaken,’ this expression of honesty was welcomed with sneers by the persons opposite him. Then closed doors were ordered, and, while one can understand the necessity of secrecy so far as certain testimony is concerned, no one has yet been able to see how the formation of s and x concerns the national defence. They came there in search of light, and I affirm that no attentive person went away without a conviction that men in power, if they had not given orders, had manifested a desire for a thickening of the darkness, rather than for light.”
M. Labori.—“What does M. Quillard think of M. Zola’s letter?”
M. Quillard.—“M. Zola belongs to a literary generation absolutely different from my own, and generally men of letters enjoying the public favor find in their immediate successors the worst of adversaries and the most clear-seeing of critics. We have not failed in this duty toward M. Zola, and even I, while rendering a high homage to his admirable work, which is an honor to French letters, have expressed the keenest reserves in regard to him. Therefore it is not at all as a faithful disciple that I come here, yet I am only the freer to say how beautiful, generous, and heroic the attitude of M. Zola seems to me. He might have kept silent; he might have listened to the counsels of what Victor Hugo in 1871 called the complaisance of public anger. He knew that, in writing the letter that he wrote, he was subjecting himself in advance to all insults and all infamies. He knew that he endangered not only his rest, but, as we now know, his life; that he endangered his honor, since we have arrived, it seems, at such a degree of social rottenness that no man can express his opinion without being accused of venality. Well, knowing the circumstances in which we live, and knowing the ignominy of anti-Semitism, I find this act of having spoken under these circumstances what he believed to be the truth, and his opinion that above the thing judged there was perhaps the thing true, to be worthy of an honest man, and of more honor to M. Zola than many of his works. So that I am happy to bring here the homage of my profound and respectful admiration.”
Testimony of M. Jean Jaurès.
Following M. Quillard came M. Jean Jaurès, a Socialist member of the chamber of deputies, whose deposition follows:
“I was present at the public portion of the Esterhazy trial, and it is because of that that I come to this bar to declare, not only the complete good faith of M. Zola, but the high moral and social value of his act. I consider that the conduct of the Esterhazy trial justifies M. Zola’s most vehement indignation. It justifies also the anxieties of those who, profoundly respectful of the national honor, do not wish the military power to rise superior to all control and all law. I add that the weaknesses shown by parliament and the government from the beginning of this affair have obliged citizens to intervene, and, by their defence of liberty and right, make up for the delinquencies of the responsible powers. In the Esterhazy case three decisive facts have especially struck me.
“In the first place, why were closed doors ordered for the hearing of the handwriting-experts? Here was involved the essential feature of the accusation. M. Esterhazy was accused of having written the bordereau. Why, then, was it necessary to discuss in the mystery and secrecy of closed doors the experts’ testimony, which was to settle this question? Closed doors which withdraw the discussion from publicity, from the control of opinion so useful, not only to the accused, but to his judges,—closed doors can be justified only by superior reasons of national interest, and it is impossible to pretend that there was any national interest whatever in concealing from the country the expert testimony relative to the authorship of the bordereau. The simple reason for the closing of the doors was the existence of an interest, which was not that of justice, in concealing the contradictions between the conclusions of the experts who testified at the trial of 1894 and the expert conclusions presented in the Esterhazy trial. But there were not only these contradictions to veil; there were other facts pointing to M. Esterhazy’s authorship of the bordereau which it was of importance to examine publicly. For my part, I know, and can bring to this bar positive testimony, that Major Esterhazy had made singularly disturbing declarations regarding the bordereau. I know it, and I can appeal here to the testimony of one of our honest confrères who will not contradict me; and I am determined, neglecting all the secondary proprieties which are not to be considered in this case, to go straight to the truth, because I consider that it is the first duty of every citizen, in this case in which obscurities have been heaped up without limit, to bring every particle of truth in his possession, that from all these particles the definitive truth may later be established. Well, this is what I heard M. Papillaud, an editor of ‘La Libre Parole,’ say twice. He made this declaration to me once as we were leaving the senate together after the interpellation made by M. Scheurer-Kestner. He made it again publicly in presence of a group that was forming in the Salle des Pas-Perdus of the chamber, which is open to all comers, and where all remarks are public. Well, M. Papillaud said to me, and to many other persons, this:
“‘I believe profoundly in the guilt of Dreyfus. I believe it, because it seems to me impossible that French officers, having to judge another French officer, should have condemned him in the absence of overwhelming evidence. I believe it, because the power of the Jews, very great four years ago, as it is today, would have torn Dreyfus from the hands of justice, if there had been in his favor the slightest possibility of salvation. The bordereau, moreover, is but an accessory element in the case; but, so far as the bordereau is concerned, it is my absolute conviction that it is the work of Esterhazy, and this is why I think so. In the two days that followed M. Mathieu Dreyfus’s letters of denunciation, M. Esterhazy, who did not seem to have recovered his self-possession completely, went often to the editorial rooms. He came to the editorial rooms of “La Libre Parole,” and there, in the presence of my comrades and myself, he said: “Yes, there is between the handwriting of the bordereau and my own a frightful resemblance, and when ‘Le Matin’ published the fac-simile, I felt that I was lost.”’
“I point out to the jurors that the fac-simile was published fifteen months, I believe, before the letter of accusation, at a time when the name of Esterhazy had not been mentioned in connection with this matter, and I leave them to judge of the moral gravity of such a remark. The result, if not the object, of hearing the expert testimony behind closed doors was the concealment of all these indications.